President Stewer and the Key
Carey, George
President Stewer and the Key George Carey We reprint here an excerpt from Arturo Slysinger's monumental work. The Age of Reason: A Complete History. (New York: Hoopla and Roll, 1985. 60 pp....
...If you hire a locksmith to open President Stewer's office, none of us will be safe...
...But you must recognize that we all have to pay a price for the preservation of freedom...
...A week later he was able to hold his first press conference...
...Question: Where would you place the blame, if any, for the fact that you spent three days without water and food-bound and gagged no less...
...b) The faculty senate met immediately to discuss this situation...
...Question: But you did go through some ordeal...
...Answer: Squarely on the shoulder of our present national administration, particularly Spiro Agnew...
...The poor chap, Mr...
...He was willing to sacrifice his life for these truths...
...Carey is Professor of Political Science at Georgetown University and recently published, with the late Willmoore Kendall, The Basic Symbols of the American Political Tradition...
...Here we can only highlight the more significant questions and answers as duly recorded by the New York Times...
...This was duly noted in the St...
...Louis Post-Dispatch...
...Sensing something wrong, they contacted other administration officials...
...They tried the door and found it locked...
...We had best leave punishment of alleged offenses against society to god, any god...
...Applause...
...are really the fault of society...
...The worst finally came to pass in 1971...
...Two principal reasons can be given for this unanimity...
...After agonizing deliberation, the Governor of Gommeticus sent the National Guard into New Heaven with specific orders to protect the locksmith, whose sole function was to unlock the door...
...None of us will be secure...
...Another dominant line of argument, presented by Professor Rodelent of the law school, ran as follows: "To hire a locksmith would constitute an abridgement of academic freedom and the sacred privacy of our academic institutions...
...Said he, "I think it wrong for any group no matter how well intentioned to engage in any such activities...
...The Washington Post put the issue this way in one of its lead editorials: "Those attacks upon President Stewer's reflective and enlightened positions, simply because he is an agnostic, are simply irrelevant to his central arguments and his vision of a better world...
...Question: Are you at all upset about the faculty senate's resolution not to seek your release...
...A bit so, I guess...
...The New York Times enthusiastically praised President Stewer for pointing out that all criminal acts (arson, bombthrowing, murder, etc...
...Members of FUN physically tried to bar the entrance of the locksmith...
...Weren't you a bit concerned...
...Soon the word was out: President Stewer, bound and gagged, was locked in his own office...
...Allow one transgression of this nature and all our precious freedoms will be lost...
...You had no food or water for three days...
...Stewer, will eventually die for lack of water and food...
...We present here a chronicle of what actually transpired...
...He will be a martyr...a symbol for those generations yet unborn...
...He is responsible for the fact that FUN abducted me...
...President Stewer, we hasten to add, did win his much deserved Nobel Peace Prize...
...One school of thought held that President Stewer would like to suffer his inevitable fate because this would be a genuine and meaningful gesture, a positive indication to the world that he was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for the principles and beliefs which he had espoused during his lifetime...
...I am proud of the behavior of the faculty and the student body during these moments of crisis...
...a) Reporters from the Colossal Broadcasting System were making their weekly pilgrimage to President Stewer in order to gain further insight into the increasingly critical question, how to run a university and keep the student and faculty militants content...
...First, Stewer was almost certain to win a Nobel Peace Prize because of his outspoken concern for humanity...
...250...
...Beware my friends...
...Answer: Not at all...
...They knocked at President's Stewer's door and all they could hear were muffled groans...
...This will endanger our right of privacy...
...A second and more important factor, was this: After being bound and gagged the FUN abductors locked Stewer in his office and then threw the key away...
...These attacks would do the late Senator Joseph McCarthy proud...
...d) The Colossal Broadcasting Company managed to get Erraticus Serverous to produce an instant special on the plight of President Stewer...
...Answer: Yes...
...Besides which I had to lose weight anyway...
...c) The students following the lead of the faculty adopted by referendum (3000 to 15) a resolution which called for the sealing of all entrances to the administration building with bricks and mortar in order to insure that there could be no outside interference...
...I think this shows that we are a free and liberal university with diversity of opinion...
...His intemperate statements about universities were clearly responsible for my plight...
...Kingster Stewer, president of Yahoo University and one of the most outspoken defenders of human liberties and student rights, was seized by members of a radical group called "Free Universities Now," (FUN for short...
...Amazingly, Sunhill's view finally prevailed...
...Something should be doafs...
...Question: Were you at any time afraid for your life...
...We cannot let this opportunity pass...
...Yes, it will be posthumously awarded...
...Despite this, the faculty by unanimous vote decided that the office should not be opened...
...This very small minority was quickly hooted down...
...But think of it...
...Its editors asked: "What kind of universities do we have when innocent kids are subject to these brutalities...
...The faculty of Yahoo University denounced this as "fascistic...
...How can I possibly run a university with such men in high public position...
...They also voted by the same margin to rename the administration building from Washington Hall to Stewer's Tomb...
...Are you upset about the students' resolution to construct a Stewer's Tomb...
...He was immediately taken to a hospital...
...Tear gas was used and approximately thirty members of FUN suffered bruises and cuts in the scuffle...
...His eloquent defense of the New Heaven rapists of 1970 captured the hearts and minds of the entire intellectual community...
...And he even expanded on this thesis when he wrote: "Justice is not of this world...
...He should be muzzled...
...Because at this time university presidents were being abducted at a rate of three a day, this particular abduction would not have merited much attention save for the following two facts...
...These original observations provided an entire generation of intellectuals with food for thought...
...Soon you will find locksmiths snooping around our campus in droves...
...The comments of Irving Sunhill, a sixth grade dropout from Topeka, Kansas, are representative of this segment of the population...
...As one proponent of this position put it so eloquently: "Now President Stewer will get his Nobel Peace Prize...
...In the course of this program several functional illiterates were interviewed...
...Although an enlightened agnostic, President Stewer was quick to point out that every man is entitled to his own opinion and that to attack his prescriptions on grounds of his non-religion constituted character assassination of the basest kind...
...President Stewer was finally rescued...
...Mr...
...This was a very small price to exact of me...
...Various resolutions were offered at the meeting...
...Some, a very few, argued that the office should not be opened because university presidents were not needed and, besides, President Stewer presented a positive menace to the goals and purposes of higher education...
...As Fate would have it, disposing of the key eventually became the key issue in the events which followed...
...Laughter...
...Answer: Not for one moment...
...The citation ran, in part, as follows: "He could see beyond the immediate situation to the transcendent truths of man's existence...
Vol. 4 • April 1971 • No. 5
